"Come in."
When we had entered the house he stared about him; then cried
out, "Acrasia's bower! Oh, thou sometime Guyon!" and began to
laugh.
It was late afternoon, and the slant sunshine streaming in at door
and window striped wall and floor with gold. Floor and wall were
no longer logs gnarled and stained: upon the one lay a carpet of
delicate ferns and aromatic leaves, and glossy vines,
purple-berried, tapestried the other. Flowers - purple and red and
yellow - were everywhere. As we entered, a figure started up from
the hearth.
"St. George!" exclaimed Rolfe. "You have never married a
blackamoor?"
"It is the negress, Angela," I said. "I bought her from William
Pierce the other day. Mistress Percy wished a waiting damsel."
The creature, one of the five females of her kind then in Virginia,
looked at us with large, rolling eyes. She knew a little Spanish, and
I spoke to her in that tongue, bidding her find her mistress and tell
her that company waited. When she was gone I placed a jack of ale
upon the table, and Rolfe and I sat down to discuss it. Had I been
in a mood for laughter, I could have found reason in his puzzled
face. There were flowers upon the table, and beside them a litter of
small objects, one of which he now took up.
"A white glove," he said, "perfumed and silver-fringed, and of a
size to fit Titania.
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